Well, who knew? Who knew, despite the composer himself retrospectively complaining
that his youthful First Symphony was a ‘Russian-Brahms-Enescu’
compound, that it was so enjoyable? It was completed when Casella was twenty-three,
in 1906, but other than noting this post-facto writing-off, we can still listen
to it with considerable pleasure. Certainly there are Tchaikovskian elements
at play and Mussorgskian ones too, most obviously in the more glowering moments
of the first movement. But the brisk march theme that is also at work here
is finely orchestrated, and fits in well thematically. In fact Casella couldn’t
have disliked this symphony as much as he claimed because he liked the slow
movement enough to recycle it in this Second Symphony - he could do so with
impunity because the earlier work hadn’t been published. It’s
warm, lyrical, sharing something of Rachmaninoff’s approach, though
there are Balakirev intimations as well. The pounding apex of this movement,
with percussion throbbing, is exciting - the tawny brass is also in its element.

Like the opening movement the finale begins with an intense Lento section
- oddly sounding a touch like Vaughan Williams. Then we move off into Brucknerian
waters. I realise I am actually playing Casella at his own game and suggesting
influences, though obviously at least two of the composers cited can’t
have been influences on Casella; this is more in the way of trying to suggest
what the music actually sounds like. The finale is the most laden, and perhaps
in some ways the most intriguing movement. I liked its open air sections,
but I also liked its Parsifalian March element too.

So, this is an exciting discovery of a symphony that bears strong traces of
late Romantic influence but which is very well orchestrated and manages for
quite a bit of the time to absorb those influences to the general good.

The companion work is a very different affair, the Concerto for strings, piano,
timpani and percussion Op.69 of 1943. It’s best here to think of contemporaneous
works by Honegger and Martinů. The neo-baroque motor is strong and resilient.
There’s a powerful Sarabande majoring in coiled lyricism; and then there’s
a bristling finale, with brusque writing for the most part but an almost disquietingly
quiet and unresolved ending. School of 1943, then - though, as we know, Casella’s
position in Mussolini’s Italy was, and remains, highly controversial.

The entertainingly written booklet notes set the seal on an exploratory release
that provides the First Symphony with its first ever recording. The Orchestra
Sinfonica di Roma under its stylistically acute conductor Francesco La Vecchia
plays with whole-hearted conviction and the performances, recorded in two
locations six months apart, have been well engineered.

There are two sides to Casella here; the striving, romance-hungry young man
weaned on Bruckner and Tchaikovsky and similarly rich milk; and the terse,
increasingly astringent older man, searching for verities in the neo-baroque
amidst the tumult of war.